XANA's Olympics: the Drabbles
by SnickieFics
Summary: It's a cruel, cruel game he plays, and he makes all the rules. This was all for the XL Olympics Daily Drabble Challenge, and I decided I wanted to keep this separate from my other unrelated drabbles.
1. Nerves

XANA had a lot of nerve to pull this kind of attack again. He NEVER repeated failed plans.

The kids sauntered forward confidently to counter him: Aelita and Odd on Lyoko, Jeremie at the controls, and William, Ulrich, and Yumi after the possessed Jim.

What they didn't expect was that XANA had drained two countries of electricity to power his slave.

William and Yumi watched as Ulrich took one trillion volts in the water with enough amperes that his nerves went haywire. And soon enough, even they stopped responding.

Returns wouldn't restore. XANA had won. His death shook their nerves.


	2. Start

Death is just a new beginning, or so they say.

For them, it was the start of many things. The search for a replacement on Lyoko. Counselling. XANA's new edge against them. Legal investigations. Police interrogations. Scary phonecalls from his father.

Ulrich's death had brought about many ordeals, and nothing would ever be the same again. No more awkward encounters, no more jealousy, no more protests against Kiwi's antics.

Most of all, no more best buddy. And returns to the past wouldn't return him to them.

It wasn't a beginning any of them had ever thought to have to face.


	3. Rush

XANA was getting stronger, but this wasn't news to them. His latest attack involved a possessed illegal alien, rat poison, and a box of rusty nails.

Yumi had fallen into the trap immediately. It wasn't her fault, really; she'd been in such a rush to get to the factory that when the man attacked her, she was knocked so hard onto the field of nails that several pierced deep into her flesh. Of course, coated in lethal amounts of arsenic.

_Please,_ she prayed as her consciousness began to fade away. _Let them not have too much trouble deactivating the tower._


	4. Bronze

For their performance on Lyoko, Yumi would have given them a bronze medal for third place.

Silver, for second place, didn't cut it: they didn't deactivate the tower in time to keep her out of serious pain.

Gold, first place, most definitely didn't apply: they didn't stop the attack before it happened.

Fourth place and beyond didn't apply, as they had definitely received a medal, that medal being the preservation of Yumi's life.

No. This time, it was XANA who had lost. Had earned last place for failing to accomplish his goal.

The Lyoko Warriors cautiously celebrated their small victory.


	5. Silver

She stared up, the clouds turning the sky a strange silver color.

It was strange that the sky was such a solemn color for a day of celebration, the day of her anniversary with Jeremie. Yumi, Odd, and even William had pitched in to make the cute couple feel special. Granted, the day just wasn't complete without Ulrich, but it had still been a good day. The sky, however, showed its disagreeance with the darkening of its clouds.

Whatever, she decided. This was a great day. Nothing was going to ruin her spirits. Nothing.

She didn't see the silver car approaching.


	6. Gold

If Allstate could have used this scenario for their Mayhem commercials, they'd have the highest rated tear-jerking commercial.

"I'm a car, possessed and being controlled remotely by a demonic artificial intelligence," Dean Winters would say. "You're enjoying your day, just walking around, and I suddenly drive by and run over your boyfriend. And if you got your life insurance at the same place you got your cut-rate car insurance, it sure ain't gonna pay for this."

_No it wouldn't,_ Aelita thought as she gently caressed Jeremie's golden hair. It was stringy and limp, like the rest of him.


	7. Fly

_It's all my fault,_ she thinks. _If I had been faster, he would still be here with us._

_No! Not Jeremie!_ she wails. _Now we'll never be able to stop XANA or have normal lives again._

Normally, he could think of a bad joke to lighten the mood here, but even this wipes the slate blank. There is nothing that he can say.

_Jeremie saved my life_, he thinks. _Saved me from XANA. Why couldn't I save his life from XANA? We're all doomed._

In the shock of his death, they were high as kites, and they didn't enjoy it.


	8. Persevere

XANA attacked again the next day. I guess he thought that we'd be too shook up over Jeremie's death to do anything about it and he could just wipe us out like dry-erase markers.

I think we were all surprised by the outcome that day. Even without Jeremie at the controls and Ulrich with his sabres, we were able to hold our own on Lyoko. I'm not saying we're better off without them; I'm saying we've grown stronger. Faster. Better. Smarter.

As long as we have each other and keep ourselves united, we will persevere, and XANA _will_ be destroyed.


	9. Stride

It's eerie how calm the school seems to be. Or maybe it's that we're freaking out so bad about Ulrich and Jeremie being gone that everything else seems like a tea party even when it's not.

XANA's been quiet lately. We think he's waiting for us to snap completely under the pressure and be taken away so he can continue his dirty work uninterrupted. Or he wants to catch us by surprise and use it to annihilate us.

We're doing our best to take it all in stride, but some days it's really hard. We want it to be over.


	10. Pace

Hasn't XANA ever heard of pacing oneself? Why would he use up so much of his energy supply launching multiple attacks in the same twenty-four hour period only for his efforts to be squashed each time?

Honestly, we're not only surviving against XANA; we're thriving, and giving him a thorough butt whipping. Aelita has even managed to make significant progress in the antiXANA program Jeremie started with all the time the Returns to the Past has given her. And since we sit through the same classes multiple times, our grades are going back up.

What a nice change of pace.


	11. Underdog

This sucks so bad.

XANA took out Kiwi, my diggity dog! What did he ever do to XANA? I mean, besides, delivering that message to Yumi when XANA had taken over that satellite. And helping Jeremie and Aelita escape detention in the library to save the Skid.

Then I understood. When Kiwi was around to help us, XANA was the underdog. Now that he was gone, XANA could isolate us without a single hope of any kind of potentially lifesaving communication or distractions via postdog.

And that's exactly what he did right after to take me out from the game.


	12. Success

Since Jeremie had successfully freed William from XANA's clutches, XANA had had a personal vendetta against him. His once-powerful slave had retained the power he'd been given by the program and used it too many times to defeat him.

It was time he be defeated once and for all, the program decided.

Perhaps his clinginess to Yumi will be the way to get through to him. And if he's fortunate enough, he could take them both out then and there.

He activated his tower and possessed Hiroki.

It took Aelita a grand total of forty-two seconds to save the day.


	13. All Out

Today, we launched our program against XANA. The one I had taken up to finish after Jeremie passed away and was thus no longer able to work on it.

XANA, of course, went all out to stop us from doing it, and would have been perfectly happy to take at least one of us out in the meantime.

And guess what? He guarded the interface in Carthage with twenty Mantas and sent even more of them down to the core of Lyoko to distract us while he deleted the program.

It's truly amazing just how original XANA can get.

Not.


	14. Speed

If there was one thing she really missed about Ulrich, it's his speed. How it allowed him to burst in, slaying all the monsters in sight, allowing Aelita to get to the tower. How he could act so cool in the face of XANA. How they could travel long distances across the sector in short amounts of time. The last of these was often a result of his constant need to save her, whether it be from a bad mood or those times when she was hanging over cliffs on Lyoko by fingertips.

Who was supposed to catch her now?


	15. Adrenaline

It coursed through his veins as he faced his supercharged foe.

It rushed in strong currents in her ears as she fought off krabs.

She used it to quickly devirtualize Yumi as she was knocked into the digital sea.

He roared with it as he stood up to vanquish his enemy.

She sweated it as she ran upstairs to assist him.

She flew on it to the tower.

His stream grinded to a halt as high charges replaced all functions.

Hers increased steeply and stopped her already broken heart.

Hers turned to tears as she realized she was too late.


	16. Spirit

Alone at last.

It wasn't a setting she'd ever wanted to face. The questions and the interrogations continued. It wasn't like she could tell the police that they'd all been killed by the hand of a computer program bent on conquering all of humankind.

On top of that, XANA was still around up to his old tricks. And it was completely up to her to stop him.

Alone.

The world didn't know it, but she was the only thing stopping them from losing their souls and becoming puppets.

Aelita didn't want to let the world down. She couldn't afford to.


	17. Victory

Computer beeped and flashed.

She looked.

XANA was on the move again.

She ran.

She saw their faces.

Ulrich.

Jeremie.

Kiwi.

Odd.

William.

Yumi.

They were back.

Jeremie smiled at her.

"We'll help you on Lyoko."

"Trust us."

"XANA'll be gone in no time."

So she went to Lyoko.

To the desert.

Where she knew there was no tower.

She heard them laugh. Then she knew it was a trap.

She ran. Called her transporter.

She had to fight _them _to win.

Her hand hit the interface.

XANA disappeared.

Broken, Aelita dove into the digital sea

Two victories

Eight losses.


End file.
